The New Yorker Radio Hour - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Could Swing the Election. Who Should Be More Worried—Biden or Trump?

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

When Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., appeared on this show back in July, it was early in his run for President, and he was considered a fringe candidate. He had the name recognition, obviously, and not much else. Now the question seems to be not whether Kennedy is going to be a spoiler in the election but which side he’s more likely to spoil. On The Political Scene, the New Yorker podcast, Washington correspondents Jane Mayer, Evan Osnos, and Susan B. Glasser gather to talk about Kennedy’s candidacy and his potential impact. “He’s not a serious threat in terms of being able to win,” Mayer says, “but he is potentially a serious threat in being able to spoil this election for one side or the other.”   New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for joining us. When I spoke with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the radio hour back in July, it was early in his candidacy. He was really still a fringe candidate. He had the obvious name recognition, a reputation as a vaccine denier, but not much else. But now as he makes his way onto one state ballot after another, the question seems to be not whether Kennedy could end up being a spoiler in the election, but which side he's more likely to spoil? The New Yorkers Washington correspondents gathered recently to talk about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And his potential impact on the election. And they got together on the podcast, The Political Scene.

I wanted to share the episode with you. So here's Jane Mayer, Evan Osnose, and starting us off, Susan Glasser. We're talking today about one of the stranger subplots to 2024, the unlikely rise of a long-shot third-party candidate, a conspiracy theorist, with a famous last name. Yeah, I was fed up too. And that's why I'm running for president of the United States as an independent.

I'm Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and I approve this message. Now that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has actually managed to get on the ballot in several states, including Michigan, the battleground that might decide the entire thing, we decided that it was time to take a look head on at him and his campaign. Is it really possible that an anti-vaccine activist, most famous in recent years for spreading conspiracy theories about COVID-19 could prove to be the spoiler of 2024. And if Kennedy does turn out to be the spoiler, just whose chances will he actually be spoiling more?

Donald Trump's or Joe Biden's? This is one of those political stories that has pretty much everything in our politics, right? It's got the feuding Kennedy clan fighting with each other. We're talking about a politician with years of baggage in the public eye, gazillionaire donors with murky agendas, not to mention the bizarre world of disinformation and sinister plots that has flourished in this new media environment. And it all comes with the ultimate high stakes. It's not really just about freak show politics, but about who gets to be the next president of the United States. So with that said, Evan, what is it? that we actually know about RFK Jr. Well, I think if we start with the particulars, it's

useful to point out some basics because some people may have sort of joined the Kennedy story late. He is a 70-year-old man, the son, of course, of Robert F. Kennedy. He is the third child of the 11 children of Robert F. Kennedy. And so that means he's JFK's nephew. He's talked publicly about the fact that he had a heroin addiction when he was young, which is significant because it was actually in the course of his recovery that he did. became interested in the environment and got involved in what would become much of his professional life working on environmental issues. But it's really been in the last several years that he has become known most widely for his embrace and defense of some of the most

bizarre conspiracy theories that are out there, especially around vaccines. And just to mention a couple of details that I think will give you a specific sense of how he talks about it a couple of years ago. He compared the vaccine system in this country to Hitler's Germany. He said in Germany, at least you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did. He then apologized for making that comparison. But then the next year in 2023, there was a video that surfaced that had him saying, there's an argument that COVID-19 is, quote, ethnically targeted and that it could attack certain races disproportionately. He said that the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.

So that, of course, is a specious and offensive argument. It's completely nuts. And I think there's a way in which Kennedy has kind of slipped in under the radar of this election and is now coming under more and more and more scrutiny. Well, I have to say, like just even listening to your description, right, Evan, it's is exactly why I'm so reluctant to engage in this for so long. Here we are in May of this incredibly consequential election year, Jane, and we're talking about someone with views like this. We shouldn't, you know, this is not the world that we should be talking.

And of course, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not a serious threat to win the presidency, Jane. So what does he said about why he's running and, you know, what is he trying to do here? Well, I mean, just before we even get into that, I mean, what you have to say is, yes, he's not a serious threat in terms of being able to win. But he is potentially a serious threat in being able to spoil this election for one side or the other. And when you've got a country that is this closely divided and states that are this closely divided, just stealing several thousand votes here and there can actually make a very big difference, which is why we are forced against our will to have to pay attention to. What is this man saying?

Against my will, right? Like that we're talking about somebody who's talking about, you know. Well, as we'll talk about, though, the not. numbers are really clear that you have to be aware of what a third party can do in an election. That's the reason to be having this conversation. My question is a little bit different, which is why does he say he's running and what is his theory of the case? Well, I mean, basically, it's a vanity candidacy, you have to say. And he thinks that he is the best candidate. He thinks he's the one candidate who can defeat the others. Does he really think that? Well, he calls Biden a spoiler at this point. He portrays. He portrays himself, and I think it's really important, actually, to take a close look at what he's saying and how he's casting himself because he is gaining some support in some quarters. And what he's portraying himself as is a truth teller, the only truth teller in a rigged system that's completely dominated by special interests and dark forces. Many of his conspiracy theories include some kind of unnamed them who are conspiring to poison the people.

with water that is polluted or with science that is meant to cause them diseases. He's created this completely upside-down world in which the COVID vaccine, which has actually saved several hundred thousand lives just in the United States, he has portrayed it as something that was cooked up to try to sicken certain populations, especially he's suggested people of color and that he is the only one telling the truth. And there are people who, for one reason or another, are very attracted to the idea that he's the only one who's on the level. And that is basically the message that he's sending. He has, in fact, been sort of at times both espousing liberal and conservative views. And I think that's part of the war that's on right now is the war to

define RFK Jr., both his own efforts to do so. His campaign seems to think that they're going to pick up Trump voters because of the vaccine denialism, the COVID-19 denialism. At the same time, he's got this sort of famous democratic last name. He's got the environmental background. Evan, what do you make of this weird stew of almost contradictory ideologies that he's espousing? Well, he's doing something that is very similar to what Trump did. And this, for reasons of a piece that I'm working on now, I've been. looking into a lot of the sort of science and psychology of con men. Why do they get into our public culture? Why do they get into our trust? And one of the things that they do that's very important is that

they rely on markers of social respectability. So if you're Donald Trump, you say, I was an insider, therefore you should believe what I say about powerful people in this world. And that's in a sense what Robert Kennedy Jr. is doing as well. He's saying, trust me, I am a Kennedy, look at my skinny tie. I trigger all of these kinds of sense memories about a period in our politics that we kind of have some nostalgia for in various parts of the country. And so he's tapping into that. And then, of course, he then fills the rest of the sentence with these wild conspiracy theories. But to your direct point, he is all over the map in terms of policy. So, for instance, Hill on immigration, he's called for open borders, but then he calls for sealing the borders. He says on abortion that he would

sign a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks, but then says that he misunderstood the question. I think the summary is he doesn't have a policy platform of any recognizable kind. He's out trying to find little places in the electorate that he can speak to their specific esoteric concerns. I mean, even on the issue that is supposedly his area of expertise, the environment. He has moved from one side to the other on climate change and come up with incoherent statements about it. And he's been denounced now by environmental groups who've said his candidacy could really hurt any kind of reform on climate change. Yeah. And not to mention by a large swath of his own family, I think there were 15 family members who recently joined

President Biden in endorsing Biden and pointing out that, you know, their brother, cousin, nephew is posing a real threat to the re-election of Joe Biden. Talk about insiders who know. They're basically saying, we know this man. Jack Slashberg basically said, I know RFK Jr. He's my cousin. And I can't think of a single thing that would qualify him to be president. As he said, yeah.

It's never a good thing when your own family members don't vote for you. No, the family members have been eloquent and absolutely brutal about him. I mean, to take the Jack Schlossberg. one, he said he's trading in on Camelot, celebrity, conspiracy theories, and conflict for personal gain and fame. Doesn't get much worse than that. Can I say? Do you remember that extraordinary ad during the Super Bowl? Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy.

Do you want a man for president who's... It was basically gauzy Camelot Redux. I mean, I know people... because he's my generation who know him very well. And like his family members, they are appalled. And they think of him going back to his college years as someone who was deeply involved in drugs and very hard drugs. By his own account, in fact, he is in recovery. And I think it's also worth mentioning, as the New Republic has written, that his atrocious treatment of women is something that voters need to know about. And he's had a past that has been, he himself has said, has been marked by lust demons that created

endless numbers of unfaithfulness and affairs. Well, Jane, it's interesting. You point out that you know friends of his, but you even appeared way back when on his career. I did, I did. I did. I mean, what I remember, he had a show called Ring of Fire, and he interviewed me about my book, Dark Money, and I felt he was pushing me to say irresponsible thing. He is a propagandist, and you can feel he's stirring the pot and trying to stir up the audience.

And I thought I was uncomfortable with it. Remarkable. Well, here we are with what seems like a sort of private tragedy of a life now being inflicted on all of us in many ways. All right, well, we'll take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk a little bit more about RFK and spoiler candidates in the past. Is there anything we can learn from history? First, Jane, I know you wanted to talk directly to our listeners for a second. Well, it's just that we've gotten some lovely notes of concern about my rather raspy voice.

I think it sounds great. Exactly. But anyway, listen, thank you all for caring. I'm absolutely fine. My doctor says something happened to my vocal cords from, it was a side effect of a virus. It's not serious. It will go away. Meanwhile, thank you for putting up with me sounding like smokier than Lauren Booker.

call. For those who know that, I'm sorry I sound like this, but thanks so much. Jane, we take you with any voice at all. Oh, thanks, guys. Jane Mayer, Evan Osnose, and Susan Glasser from the New Yorker's political scene. More in just a moment. I think we have to acknowledge RFK Jr. is not the first potential spoiler candidate in American history.

Far from it in this two-party era. We've had many third-party candidates, many outsiders who've tried. who've tried and some who've actually succeeded in affecting the outcome of elections. You know, while we're talking history, Jane, I have to say this week, 1968 has been top of mind and not only because of the protests at Columbia University that I'm sure we were all glued to the television watching, it turns out, interestingly, that the very same party, third party that nominated RFK Jr. to get on the ballot in California, a group called the American Independent Party, was also the party that supported George Wallace back in the 1968 presidential election.

Now, like RFK Jr., Wallace had controversial opinions to say the least. You know, he actually, he's the very last independent candidate to actually win any states, which he did in 1968, certainly contributing many people believed to the defeat of Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic Vice President, at the hands of Richard Nixon, which otherwise might have been a pretty close election. Is that the historical parallel that comes to mind for you? What else have you been thinking about when we talk about our case? I mean, definitely 1968.

I mean, George Wallace took, I think it was five states in the Deep South. And so it certainly made a tremendous dent in Humphrey. I think, you know, moving on from there, 1992, people think that Ross Perrault, running as a third party candidate may truly have helped defeat the re-election of George H.W. Bush and helped usher in the election of Clinton. Many people have argued otherwise, though, and pointed out that Clinton's margin of victory was big enough that it may not have made a difference. But actually, Perot, if you go back and look, I think he took, he had the largest number of votes. Yeah, 19% of the party candidate.

But he didn't have them. That was the most since Teddy Roosevelt. But he did not carry a single state. He had no electoral votes, basically. And then, I mean, I think the most fateful one in more recent times may have been in 2000. When you had in Florida such an incredibly close call for who won, there was just a 537 vote margin in favor of George W. Bush. And Ralph Nader, who was running, took 97,000 votes in Florida. I mean, so you can see. what effect he could have had on the math. And most of those votes, people think, would have gone to Democrats. So Gore, if not for Nader, probably would have won Florida and been president. Well, remember, that was an actually close election as opposed to the one that Donald Trump has spent the last four years screaming about. To me, the other one that really makes a difference was 2016. And Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. By the way, she's running again. And we should point out in this conversation that actually RFK Jr. is not the only outsider independent candidate running this year. We'll see if any of the others, Jill Stein, Cornell West, make a difference in this race. To me, I do wonder about the electoral math, right? Like, right now it doesn't really matter. You look at these polls where RFK is polling surprisingly well, but we live in a reality where it all comes down to the states.

Exactly as you say, Susan, the, you know, presidential elections are about the states. And you raised 2016, which is really a useful benchmark in the battleground states. Third party candidates in 2016 got 5% of the vote, which, as everybody who listens to this kind of show knows, is way more than the margin of difference in places like Wisconsin and Michigan. So it had a tremendous impact. The amazing thing is that when people are aware of, the stakes. When they recognize that third party candidates could in fact tilt the difference in an election, they behave very differently. So in 2020, when it was much more widely described as a neck and neck race versus 2016, where everybody was laboring under the illusion that it was going to be a Clinton victory, in 2020, third party candidates only got 1.5% in those battleground states. Just a huge difference and a decisive difference. Historically, third party candidates really do hurt the incumbent. And it's because this goes all the way back to the Civil War, if you look at the data. And the reason is because they tend to run on the argument that the current crowd can't do it. You need me. You need this person from the outside. So, look, at the moment, I've given you some numbers 5%, 1.5%. Kennedy right now, according to compositive polls, is at 10%. So this is a real issue, a live issue. And it's one that I think is, there's a reason why the campaigns are getting much more focused on. Well, and I think it's important to point. It's important to point. And out that if ever there were a year when there is a consensus on one thing, it is that Americans are

very dissatisfied with both parties and both candidates going into 2024. And I think that's where the conditions exist. I think we're at the high watermark of the percentage of Americans who identify themselves right now as independence. And, you know, there's sort of thirst for other alternatives. And boom right into the mix, come somebody with a universally recognizable last name and, you know, people don't know that much about him. They really don't. I've actually talked to a number of kids, young voters, and even my cousin's kids in one part of my family. And they were attracted to Kennedy as just they like his sort of anti-establishment, shake it up, you know, everybody's corrupt except for me message. And they don't

know very much about him. They really don't. And so this is why I think even though we are loathe to sort of give a platform to his views, I think you kind of have to educate the voting public somehow about who he really is. Well, unfortunately, that's the paradox of our somewhat broken American political system is that the small number of the lowest information, least participating voters in society, they exercise because of the electoral college, a very disproportionate influence on the outcome of the election. You know, there's a, there's been interesting polling done by the Harvard Youth Poll, which goes out and talks to young people around the country. And they do find that RFK is kind of popular among young people, people under 29. So there is a way in which his outsider

identity that he's presenting is meeting this moment in a strange way. And I think, look, as you say, he's not the only third-party candidate in the race. Cornell West has been running and was meeting with protesters speaking to protesters at the campuses. So this is a moment when I think the third party element of this race has become clearer and clearer. All right, guys. So we got to talk about this question of, is he a problem for Trump? Is he a problem for Biden? Is he a problem for both?

I mean, you know, the confused ideological message we've already gotten into, we don't really know because RFK himself doesn't seem to really know. what I'm fascinated by is how both campaigns right now seem to be almost panicking a little bit. You have Donald Trump barraging us with true social after true social. You know, the other day Trump called him a, quote, radical left lunatic whose crazy climate change views make the Democrats green, new scam, look conservative. By the way, I'm exhaling while reading that because it's got Donald Trump's trademark. punctuation in there and lots of capital letters where they don't belong. But I think it's really fascinating to watch it. Is Trump starting to freak out about RFK or is Joe Biden? And this comes back to,

for me, Jane, the big questions of his candidacy. It's a question my dad used to phrase lawyer language, quibono, who benefits? Why is he in the race? Well, let's talk a little bit about why he is in the race and how this started. And it began really with him being wooed to get into the race by several on the very far right. They saw him as a way to wound Biden. And they wanted him to run as a primary challenger on the Democratic ticket and try to hurt Biden. And the reason that the message is now getting more muddled is that he's running as an independent, which is not as guaranteed to just hurt Biden. It's going to steal some votes also from Trump. And his message is somewhat Trump. as you've both been saying. And so Trump is also getting a little bit nervous about this. I mean,

one of the things that's very interesting to me anyway is that his early support financially came from some of the biggest backers of Trump. And you can see that it was almost a dirty trick, basically. There's one man in particular named Tim Mellon, who's an 81-year-old recluse, who is an heir to the melon banking and oil fortune. And he's been a tremendous backer of Trump. And he gave even more money, interestingly, to RFK when he was just starting up to his pack. He obviously saw this as a sort of a kind of a play that he could do to just cause problems for the Democrats. Well, so, Evan, do you agree? Are the money men right that this is actually a ploy to defeat Biden? And it's as simple as that? Well, as we've talked about, incumbents tend to be more vulnerable to third-party candidates. I think the fact that Kennedy is fundamentally tapping into his family name, that's the sort of core of the strategy. That's the reason why there's so much concern among Democrats.

But I think there's an element of this that's interesting, as some people have described it, he's kind of appealing to the Joe Rogan element of the electorate, which is to say young men, the sort of I do my own research crowd who go out and are. suspicious of institutions, you know, they are finding it harder to graduate from college, get employed, things like that. This is that segment. And for that crowd, his kind of general contempt for expertise is intriguing. Yeah, I think that's right. And Jane, I'm really glad you brought up the issue of Trump donors who have been funding RFK because it really, it reminds me actually of when we were based in Russia in the early years of the Putin presidency, Putin's advisors came up with this. term managed democracy to describe what they were doing. Of course, it was not really managing democracy. It was really ending democracy. But one of the ways in which they did it was to create essentially fake parties that were controlled by the Kremlin. And they were for voters who weren't going to go for Putin's party, but they didn't want to go into any kind of real opposition that would actually threaten the Kremlin. And so they actually created from scratch, a party when I was there called Motherland, right? And it was, you know, just drawn up by political consultants.

They got a frontman to do it. They funded him. They're siphoning off votes. And, you know, there are millions of Americans today who they don't want to identify themselves as Democrats or Republicans. That's why independents are such a big percentage of the population in the polls right now. They may consider that they just can't vote for Donald Trump for this or that reason. But now there's an alternative other than Biden. And I think that that's a very powerful kind of a dirty trick. If it is a political dirty trick, it's one that's worked in a lot of systems. I mean, it is essentially a dirty trick to back and create a candidate who you do not actually support in order to help your other candidate who you do support. I mean, and that is basically

what it's a trojan horse kind of play. Stocking horse, the classic stalking horse kind of truck. The other thing is, I don't think that RFK's candidacy, we've had independent candidates before, But his candidacy does seem to me to be uniquely powered by this kind of media environment in which somebody who says so many false and untrue things, who promotes conspiracy theories, is given a platform, can create his own platforms again and again and again. Right now, Evan, he's very popular on Fox News on that whole kind of media ecosystem. Yeah, he is. You know, Susan, I'm curious how you see it. You're looking at the politics day to day. You're sort of following pretty closely the rhythms of the campaign.

And do you get the sense that he is growing as a phenomenon or that he's actually beginning to fade away? And it's worth pointing out historically third party candidates do begin to fade as you get closer to the election as people kind of realize the stakes. But what do you think? Well, look, the bottom line is I don't pay much attention to where he's out in the national polls because I think that this race is, so close that it really is going to come down to this small handful of battleground states. And so for me, the really important threshold that was crossed here was recently when he got onto the ballot in Michigan, he looks like he could be on the ballot in a couple other states that might matter come November, Nevada and North Carolina are the two that spring to mind. So, you know, in a way,

those national numbers might be kind of distracting or misleading. But, you know, I actually think Michigan in particular holds the possibility to be the decisive state this year. And, you know, do I think he could affect the outcome there? Look, Donald Trump won Michigan over Hillary Clinton by a few thousand votes in 2016. So that's why we're having this conversation. I have to admit, even listening to all your smart observations, guys, it still makes me deeply uncomfortable. Here we are basically tanking one of the cranks of the internet era and elevating. him into a decisive factor in our national politics. I mean, really the truth, though, is that any member of the Kennedy family starts with such a head start. I mean, he may be a crank of the Internet, but he's got the most famous name in democratic politics. And so you kind of can't really ignore him. So, I mean, you know, and he's using that platform, exploiting it and taking very opportunistic positions that are just designed to inflame voters. Evan, a final question. Do you think that the Kennedy name still has that kind of resonance? I mean, after all the scandals, after so many decades have gone by, you know, I'm not convinced that young people really have this kind of Camelot worship that older generations had.

Well, I think it still has some resonance with people, but in some ways, the clearest description of what RFK Jr. means to his family's legacy is, in fact, coming from his very own relatives. His sister, Rory Kennedy, and some others, released a statement right when he announced his candidacy in which they said that his decision, as they put it, is dangerous to our country, his decision to run. They said, Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision, or judgment. There is a way in which Robert F. Kennedy is doing fundamental and systematic damage to what the Kennedy political name has meant, and ultimately that may be his contribution to this election. A final tragedy for a family that has had many of them.